A Mathematician's Journeys

This book explores facets of Otto Neugebauer's career, his impact on the history and practice of mathematics, and the ways in which his legacy has been preserved or transformed in recent decades, looking ahead to the directions in which the study of the history of science will head in the twenty-first century. Neugebauer, more than any other scholar of recent times, shaped the way we perceive premodern science. Through his scholarship and influence on students and collaborators, he inculcated both an approach to historical research on ancient and medieval mathematics and astronomy through precise mathematical and philological study of texts, and a vision of these sciences as systems of knowledge and method that spread outward from the ancient Near Eastern civilizations, crossing cultural boundaries and circulating over a tremendous geographical expanse of the Old World from the Atlantic to India.

The first major study of the 20th century's most influential historian of science and his impact. New perspectives on the mathematical community in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. Explores how our understanding of ancient mathematics and astronomy has evolved since the late 19th century.

Contenu

From Graz to Göttingen: Neugebauer's Early Intellectual Journey.- "Not in Possession of Any Weltanschauung": Otto Neugebauer's Flight From Nazi Germany and his Search for Objectivity in Mathematics, in Reviewing, and in History.- Otto Neugebauer's Visits to Copenhagen and his Connection to Denmark.- Otto Neugebauer and Ancient Egypt.- As the Outsider Walked in: The Historiography of Mesopotamian Mathematics until Neugebauer.- François Thureau-Dangin and Cuneiform Mathematics.- Mathematical and Philological Insights on Cuneiform Texts: Neugebauer's Correspondence with Fellow Assyriologists.- After Neugebauer: Recent Developments in Mesopotamian Mathematics. - Babylonian Astronomy 1880 1950: The Players and the Field.- Neugebauer's Astronomical Cuneiform Texts and its Reception.- Translating Babylonian Mathematical Astronomy: Neugebauer and Beyond.